Water desalination refers to processes that remove salts and other minerals from water. The processes are most often used for desalination of sea water and brackish water. Modernly, the most common desalination processes are reverse osmosis and vacuum distillation. However, these processes often require preprocessing of water to remove contaminants prior to desalination.
Desalination processes may be used for the production of pure water, and/or for extraction of salts from salt bearing water. For example, desalination processes may be used to provide potable water and/or dry sea salt from sea water.